My 2nd year of collecting baseball cards, and the last card set before expansion to 24 teams and divisional play. I have completed the whole set. (Series 1-5, and 7 during 1968. In my neighborhood, the 6th series was unavailable. I completed this in the 1980s.) -- 28-SEP-2009

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Final Card: Dick Lines

This is the 2nd and last Topps card for Senators' pitcher Dick Lines (#291). His rookie card was in the 1967 set, a 1-player card showing Lines with the Senators.

Lines' career is somewhat of a mystery. He spent 9 full seasons in the minors, before pitching the entire 1966 and 1967 seasons with the Senators. Then, it was back to the minors for 2 more seasons before calling it quits.

Lines was signed by the Pirates in 1957, and pitched in their farm system for 8 seasons, all but the last as a starting pitcher. Prior to the 1965 season, his contract was sold to the Senators. That season he pitched for the Sens' AAA team in Hawaii, which finally earned him a shot in the majors.

Dick spent the entire 1966 season as the only lefthander in Washington's bullpen, which featured veterans Ron Kline and Bob Humphreys, along with Casey Cox and 3 others who floated between the bullpen and the rotation (Jim Hannan, Diego Segui, and Dick Bosman). Lines fashioned a 5-2 record in 82 innings, and had a 49/24 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

In 1967, the Senators' bullpen featured Darold Knowles (a lefty), veteran Bob Priddy, and rookie Dave Baldwin in place of Ron Kline and Diego Segui. Lines, Humphreys, and Cox were the holdovers from '66. Knowles and Baldwin were the stars in terms of saves and ERA, and Knowles, Humphreys, and Priddy had the most innings pitched among relievers. Lines had similar games, innings, and strikeout/walks to the previous season, but his record fell from 5-2 to 2-5. I guess he was just out-performed by the other guys, because he didn't pitch in the majors after 1967.

Two more seasons (1968-69) in the Nats' farm system brought an end to Dick Lines' career.

Set description I posted in Zistle

The 1968 Topps set included 598 cards, 11 fewer than the previous year. As in 1967, the cards had vertical backs. Topps returned to the teams’ color scheme that was used in the 1966 set (and would also be used in 1969). Cards in the high-numbered 7th series are more difficult to find, due to limited distribution that late in the season.

Among the cards are 20 manager cards, 12 league leader cards, and 8 World Series cards. Inexplicably, there are only team cards for 13 of the 20 teams. The set includes just 30 rookie stars cards (down from 43 the previous year), and there is no Giants Rookie Stars card, which is odd considering that Bobby Bonds would have been a candidate for that card. Multi-player cards decreased from 13 in 1967 to just 3 in the 1968 set. Two of them feature stars from multiple teams. All-star cards (20) returned to the set in 1968, after being absent for several years.

The 1968 set includes the final cards for 48 players and 2 managers, including long-time veterans Eddie Mathews and Roger Maris (who both wrapped up their careers in the 1968 World Series), Rocky Colavito, Elston Howard, Bill Henry, Larry Jackson, Al Worthington, Norm Siebern, Larry Sherry, Jim Bouton, and Floyd Robinson.

Notable rookie cards in the set are Nolan Ryan and Jerry Koosman (on the same card) and Johnny Bench. Other rookie cards in the set (all “solo” cards) include Gary Nolan, Don Wilson, Manny Sanguillen, Mike Marshall, and Danny Frisella.

1968 rookies with significant playing time who were omitted from the set include Reggie Jackson, Bobby Bonds, Del Unser, Bobby Cox, Hector Torres, Tom Burgmeier, Marty Pattin, and Sparky Lyle.

Other quirks in the 1968 set: - For some (contractual?) reason, all the Astros cards show the team name as “Houston”, and all Astros logos are airbrushed out of the photos. - Since the Athletics moved to Oakland in the off-season, all photos are airbrushed. - As mentioned above, 7 teams did not have a team card, and there was no Giants Rookie Stars card. - The design of the “burlap” borders was changed after the first series. - The "Topps All-Rookie Team" trophy is missing from the cards for Rick Monday, Rich Nye, and Dick Hughes.